I understand that Rachel was held to a higher standard, as the reigning Horse of the Year, but to what end? Have we become so expecting of perfection of our stars, that they simply can not live up to them. Do we not allow ourselves to fully enjoy the special ones, because of these expectations?

Simply, yes.

There’s something about repeated brilliance that inspires a fear of loss (a fear not specific to racing). It’s sentimental. We can’t stand to lose the magic.

It wouldn’t be inappropriate at all if “Happy Days are Here Again” was being piped on a continuous loop at Baffert’s Santa Anita barn. Or if there was the overall feeling that the clock had been turned back a decade or more.

Baffert horses have won 17 races and finished in-the-money in 28 races out of 33 starts. That’s a win rate of 46%, an ITM rate of 76%. Of his 17 winners, all on the dirt, nine have won going wire-to-wire and another five have been within a length of the lead at the start. Always a Princess, winner of the El Encino Stakes on Sunday, counts among the latter. The 4-1 third-favorite chased Champagne d’Oro through early fractions of :22.38 and :45.41, drawing away in the stretch to finish 3 1/2 lengths ahead of favored Blind Luck with a final time of 1:41.47. Blind Luck, making her 4-year-old debut:

… never appeared comfortable in the El Encino as jockey Joel Rosario tried to get her going while racing from well off the pace in a field reduced to five 4-year-old fillies by three scratches. She shied from the whip a couple of times in the stretch.

She also appeared to take a bad step mid-stretch and then stumbled after the wire, dumping Rosario (the rider was uninjured). Despite her apparent dislike of the going, Blind Luck still ran the final 2 1/2 furlongs almost a second faster than did Always a Princess. DRF Formulator gives her closing time as :31.78, Always a Princess :32.73. Being a deep closer on a speed-favoring track is never easy, and trainer Jerry Hollendorfer seemed to be considering his options for the filly after the race, telling Steve Andersen, “We may have to do something else. If the track stays the same way, I don’t think we’ll run here.”

… Jamgotchian said he feels California is a better place to race now because the “purse structure is higher” and smaller stakes fields increase the chances of his horses acquiring black-type than, for example, at Gulfstream Park.

“There are less horses in California to compete against. The new dirt track at Santa Anita is also an impetus,” he said.

Can anyone explain exactly what is the real story behind California’s so-called “horse shortage”? Reading Steve Andersen’s piece in the DRF this morning it struck me once again that all we ever hear out of that state in recent years is excuses why they can’t fill cards.

So, the investigation into the l’affaire Life at Ten is ongoing, with the Office of the Inspector General in the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet being brought in “to have some independent review for certain aspects of it.” That’s KHRC executive director Lisa Underwood talking to Jennie Rees, who also reports that the KHRC has conducted 90 interviews regarding the Breeders’ Cup Distaff Ladies’ Classic fiasco. Ninety? Once this investigation concludes, how about another into what’s been a frustratingly opaque and slow process.

It’s more interesting to me that Zenyatta will likely repeat as champion older female without having started against most of this year’s top distaffers. Of the 10 Ladies’ Classic contenders ranked by DRF (PDF), she’ll have met Rinterval (second in the Hirsch, entered in the Lady’s Secret) and Zardana. She won’t have raced against Life At Ten, Unrivaled Belle, or Persistently (entered in the Beldame) or Blind Luck and Havre de Grace (entered in the Cotillion). That’s nothing to hold against Zenyatta, who can only run against those entered against her, but it is a depressing comment on how rarely the best racehorses meet on track, as is Blind Luck shipping to Parx for a stakes restricted to 3-year-old fillies instead of Hollywood or Belmont to challenge her elders.

College football fans tuned into ESPN this Saturday will get a chance to see Zenyatta. As part of a Breeders’ Cup Challenge telecast running from 6:30 to 8:00 PM ET on ESPN Classic and ESPN360, ESPN will break in between games at 7:15 PM to air the Lady’s Secret Stakes from Oak Tree at Hollywood Park.

Well into the 1990s, you could say ESPN was a true sports network, with an eclectic line-up that included football, baseball, soccer, golf, bass fishing, and the X Games. If people played it, ESPN aired it. Changes came with ABC/Disney ownership, competition from other networks, and an ambitious expansion plan that rode the rise of cable and the web, turning ESPN into the TV-radio-digital-print behemoth it is now. There’s a downside to this dominance, though, a homogenizing of sport, an emphasis on the popular and lucrative.

Think of it this way: ESPN is to sports as Playboy was to sex.

Like Hugh Hefner’s groundbreaking men’s magazine, ESPN transformed an industry, becoming hugely influential to a generation of young men and radically reshaping their perceived interests. Along the way, it became less a celebration of all that is athletic than a platform for aggregating massive advertiser-friendly audiences. That means fewer small-market sports, whether hockey or horseracing, and more major league sports and specious “news” coverage. When all of sports was a niche, more sporting niches thrived. Gone mainstream, broadly appealing sports “narratives” gain prominence.

What that means for racing is that events such as the Breeders’ Cup need ESPN to reach the largest possible audience of sports fans, but ESPN has no need for horseracing — which is why on Saturday, Zenyatta will be the entertainment between football games, not the main attraction.

It’s not a BC Challenge race, so it won’t be appearing on any ESPN channel, but Blind Luck versus Havre de Grace in the Cotillion Stakes at Philadelphia Park Parx on Saturday looks like a must-watch race. It’ll be the third meeting between the two 3-year-old fillies. Stakes winner Awesome Maria, making her second start of the year, is also entered. The Cotillion is part of the second annual Lady Riders Challenge, a very cool, under-reported event.

“It seems like we have the best 3-year-old filly, right now,” said trainer Jerry Hollendorfer after Blind Luck won the Alabama Stakes at Saratoga. “[But] I hate to make those kinds of assessments.” There’s no reason for him to feel reluctant, not when his late-running filly overcame an absurdly slow pace (:49.45 for the half, 1:14.81 for three-quarters) to take her third Grade 1 stakes victory of the year. That’s the right kind of tough luck:

I knew I was in trouble with It’s Tea Time when her name kept surfacing in blog posts and tweets Saturday morning as a top Oaks pick. It was shades of Sweetnorthernsaint in the 2006 Kentucky Derby, watching the hype build. “It’s official: the first ‘blogger steam’ horse in history is It’s Tea Time,” remarked @HRFattheTrack. At 7-1, well down from her morning line odds of 15-1, the filly went into the gate as the third favorite.

(Paulick Report video of the surprise press conference: Part 1, Part 2.)

While Jackson’s statements may seem a little rushed, I can’t fault him for wanting to check any speculation about retirement; Rachel Alexandra deserves another start. To paraphrase Jay Hovdey, she’s not running badly, she’s just not winning, and there are plenty of races remaining in the year.

11:00 AM Addendum: A final time of 1:42.97 for the LaTroienne, a Beyer speed figure of 103 for both Unrivaled Belle and Rachel Alexandra.